Since 1910, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History has inspired curiosity and learning about the natural world and our place in it.

Our Present

05/14/2015

Museum specimens and records in historic literature and archives represent the only available information for many rare, extinct, and endangered species. In order to properly evaluate, study, and protect endangered populations, scientists require access to these records and specimens. The Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) is an open access digital library committed to providing free, global access to books and archives about the world’s plants and animals. With over 46 million pages spanning the past five centuries of recorded knowledge about Earth’s biodiversity, BHL includes a wealth of knowledge about endangered species and supports the work of scientists and conservationists around the globe.

I've worked with the Biodiversity Heritage Library in various roles since 2008, and what I love most about my job is that I feel like I'm making a true difference to the work of those committed to describing, understanding, and protecting our precious biodiversity. Historic literature and archival field books provide information such as species data, ecosystem profiles, distribution maps, inter-dependency observations, geological and climatic records, and an historical perspective on species abundance, habitat alteration, and human exploration, culture and discovery. This information has a multitude of applications in modern-day science. It is used to populate species databases and datasets that inform present-day research. It not only allows scientists to study biodiversity, but also to save it by enabling new species identification and facilitating the development of holistic conservation methods that integrate all of the factors necessary for a species’ wellbeing into its overall protection strategy.

My work on the Biodiversity Heritage Library is helping scientists obtain free, open access to information that is critical to the conservation of not only endangered species, but life on our planet as a whole. As BHL's Outreach and Communication Manager, I spend most of my time sharing the awesome resources in our library via social media and working to ensure that as many people as possible know about the incredible free resources available at their fingertips. One thing I love to do in our social posts is highlight various species and books found in our collection, and to honor Endangered Species Day, I've selected a few of my favorite endangered species and shared information and beautiful illustrations from BHL below.

Arakan Forest Turtle (Heosemys depressa). Anderson, John. Anatomical and zoological researches: comprising an account of the zoological results of the two expeditions to western Yunnan in 1868 and 1875. v. 2 (1878). Yunnan Expeditions, Plate LV. Digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

Species One: Arakan Forest Turtle (Heosemys depressa)

In 2009, scientists saw one of the rarest turtles in the world for the first time in the wild. Believed extinct since 1908 until conservationists re-discovered it in a Chinese food market in 1994, the Arakan Forest Turtle (Heosemys depressa) was known to science by only a few museum and captive specimens until the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) team discovered five turtles in an elephant wildlife sanctuary in Myanmar in Southeast Asia. Listed as critically-endangered by the IUCN, the WCS team believes the elephant sanctuary holds promise as a focus for future conservation efforts for the turtle.

The kākāpō (Strigops habroptilus). Buller, Walter Lawry. A history of the birds of New Zealand. (1873). Digitized by Natural History Museum Library, London.

Species Two: The kākāpō (Strigops habroptilus)

The kākāpō has many impressive distinctions. It is the world’s heaviest parrot. It is also the world’s only flightless parrot. It is found only in New Zealand, and, with a lifespan of up to about 120 years, it may be one of the world’s longest-living birds. Today, the total known population is less than 150 individuals. Human development and introduced predators decimated the kākāpō population, particularly in the 19th century. Today, the Kākāpō Recovery Plan, implemented in the 1980s, monitors and protects the remaining population on three islands – Codfish Island (Whenua Hou), Little Barrier Island (Hauturu) and Anchor Island.

The Javan rhinoceros is probably the rarest large mammal in the world, with no more than 50 individuals left in the wild and none in captivity. The second-largest animal in Indonesia after the Asian elephant, adults are reported to weigh anywhere from 900-2,300 kg. Of three known subspecies, including the Indonesian Sunda rhinoceros, Vietnamese Sunda rhinoceros, and the Indian Sunda rhinoceros, only one – the Indonesian subspecies – still remains. While the Indian subspecies is believed to have gone extinct before 1925, the last remaining Vietnamese Sunda rhinoceros was killed by a poacher in 2010. Poaching, habitat loss, and lack of genetic diversity are the greatest threats to this species. Learn more about the rhinoceros and current conservation efforts from WWF.

03/17/2015

For 105 years, the National Museum of Natural History has served as a center for learning that has enabled millions of visitors every year to better understand the world we live in through innovative, hands-on learning experiences, scientific and cultural programming, and world-class exhibitions. To celebrate our 105th Birthday we want to share some highlights, tidbits of what we’ve learned, and moments of inspiration! What have you learned from your museum visits? What has inspired your scientific curiosity? Join the conversation online with the hashtag #NMNHBday!

We spoke with Dr. Kirk Johnson, Sant Director of NMNH, to kick-off the celebration!

For the past 28 months, I have had the honor of serving as the Director of the Museum. It has been a distinct privilege, one made all the more exciting by the fact that a day has yet to go by that I haven't learned something new. I'd like to share a few of the interesting things I have learned with you here:

1. You can breathe new life into old objects.

Climbing into the glass case in the Hall of Mammals, our researchers carefully plucked a few hairs from the taxidermy mount of the thylacine, or so-called Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus). A dog-sized marsupial extinct since 1936, Curator Kris Helgen and an international team of scientists managed to reconstruct the thylacine's mitochondrial genome from just those few hairs. New technologies are continually emerging which make it increasingly cheaper and faster to sequence museum collections, unlocking their genetic potential for research and biodiversity conservation.

The museum is a major scientific research center where hundreds of staff and visiting scientists are working to uncover the mysteries of the Earth and similar planets every day. Our staff named over 400 new species just last year!

Two of the National Zoo’s thylacines, probably the surviving offspring of the original female, outside the Carnivora House, c. 1905. One of these animals (most likely the one in front) is USNM 125345, a specimen recently DNA-sequenced by a team of international scientists. (Image by E. J. Keller; National Zoological Park)

2. The ocean is teeming with undiscovered creatures.

From bacteria to whales, the ocean is home to a huge diversity of weird, wild, and wonderful animals, the vast majority of which awaits either discovery or the most basic understanding of what it is and how it functions. Among them are the hyperiid amphipods that swim their whole lives in the open water. Ranging in size from a few millimeters to nearly the length of your hand, they feed on jellies and other semi-helpless gelatinous animals. Curator Karen Osborn and other scientists are studying their eyes and find that within the approximately 320 species described so far, ten very different types of compound eyes have evolved to help them survive in the very dark waters of the deep ocean. They have eyes that allow them to see 360 degrees around their heads, mirrored eyes, duplicate eyes specialized for seeing different things, fiber optics, huge eyes, every other variation you can imagine and probably a few you haven't even imagined!

This image is a head-on (anterior/ventral) view of “P. gracilis” showing the two rows of orange pigmented retinas and the size of the head in comparison to the body. All those legs are used to grasp and scurry over their siphonophore prey. (Image by Karen Osborn, Smithsonian Institution)

3. Building a 21st century home for dinosaurs is no simple task - especially in a 105-year-old building.

One of the most complex projects in the Museum’s history is now underway – the renovation of the National Fossil Hall. Working with over two thousand fossils comprised of over 10,000 individual pieces and spanning 3 billion years of Earth's history is no easy feat. Imagine that most of those specimens have incomplete or now-scientifically inaccurate information and all need specialized handling and care. The Fossil Hall space, itself, is a circa-1910 architectural fossil badly in need of a complete overhaul. While over seven million visitors continue to explore the Museum's other exhibitions, hundreds of shipments will arrive behind the scenes carrying miles of conduit, electrical, ventilation, and data lines and tons of building materials for the renovation. You can follow along with the progress as our Exhibition team designs and builds the Fossil Hall of the future.

Director Kirk Johnson and Dr. Matthew Carrano inspecting the humerus, part of the forearm, of the Nation’s T. rex. (Image by Hilary-Morgan Watt, Smithsonian Institution)

4. We have the world’s largest collection of whale skeletons.

NMNH is the repository of the world's largest natural history collection - home to more than 128 million specimens, each of which enable us to travel through time to see the world as it once was and to look ahead to what it might be in the future. Our whale collection is just one of many comprehensive research collections, and we're taking this content into the future by 3-D scanning specimens.

Jawbones of blue whale, in off-site storage at the Museum Support Center in Maryland. One mandible is the single largest bone in the world. (Image by Hilary-Morgan Watt, Smithsonian Institution)

5. Re-thinking the way young people are exposed to science will have a tremendous impact on our future.

I grew up around museums. I spent lots of time as a kid exploring the Burke Museum and getting to know its scientists in my hometown of Seattle. Along with actively spending time in nature collecting fossils, this helped lead me to become a paleontologist. For more than a year, the Q?rius Science Education Center has been open for business onsite and online! This innovative space targeted to kids in middle and high school allows visitors to immerse themselves in science. Kids are encouraged to interact with our scientists, use laboratory quality scientific equipment, and pick up and handle museum-grade collection objects (over 6,000 specimens!) from dinosaur fossils to fish to flowers. Explore Q?rius online and start to build your own digital field book!

02/22/2015

As our Museum writers, scientists, and exhibition developers produce the script for the new Fossil Hall, they’re discovering lots of fascinating stories about how life evolved. We’ll be sharing some of our favorites here.

Passing cargo ships are a common sight at one of the fossil dig sites along the Panama Canal. Photo by Juliana Olsson.

In March 2014, I visited a fossil excavation project along the Panama Canal run by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. We don’t normally search for fossils in the lush tropics, but the current expansion project to widen the channels and build new locks is exposing more rocks. This gives scientists a rare opportunity to find otherwise inaccessible fossils. It was both strange and wonderful to stand on the 100-year-old canal and look at fossils that were far older. Panama’s story is essentially the tale of multiple waves of invasive species. The formation of this narrow strip of land millions of years ago allowed organisms from North and South America to cross into new environments. Today, humans bring animals and plants to Panama from distant ports. Along the banks of the canal, invasive species separated by millions of years meet—elephant grass native to South Asia slowly encroaches on fossils that reveal new information about our planet’s past.

Panama today is an isthmus (or land bridge) connecting North and South America. Image from freeworldmaps.net.

Lay of the Land

Panama’s geology is crucial to this story of species migration. Before it was an isthmus, Panama was a peninsula jutting off of North America. Between 21 and 18 million years ago, the distance between North and South America was about 124 miles (200 km) and covered in deep seas. The sediments along the canal reveal a series of drastic transformations during this time: underneath volcanic basalt, paleontologists have uncovered a shallow marine environment sandwiched between two terrestrial layers. These layers tell scientists that within the span of a few million years this region was first above sea level, then underwater, then above sea level again, and later covered in lava—all due to tectonic activity. Fast-forward to 1914, when the landscape again changed dramatically (this time thanks to humans): where a land bridge once separated two oceans, the United States government divided the continents by completing a series of canal locks connected by an enormous artificial lake.

Past Invasions

Around three million years ago, land animals migrated in earnest across the Isthmus of Panama. Scientists call this the Great American Biotic Interchange (or GABI). Camels, elephant-like gomphotheres, tapirs, deer, foxes, rabbits, bears, peccaries, and cougars moved into South America while large flightless birds, giant ground sloths, capybaras, armadillos, porcupines, and opossums came north. This migration totally changed the face of the fauna on both continents—in fact, many animals that we think of as stereotypically South American (such as llamas) actually have North American origins.

The rocks along the canal are at least 15 million years older than GABI, so scientists expected to find North American animals like horses, camels, bear-dogs, and raccoons. They didn’t expect South American species, but that is what they are now unearthing. Take the 19.3 million year old boa fossil they found. Boas can swim, but crossing a 124-mile (200 km) seaway is an impressive feat. How did it get to Panama? Did it “island-hop,” or raft across on storm-swept debris? Or was there an older, more solid connection between North and South America? Fossils like this one are pushing back the timing of the formation of the isthmus, and making scientists re-evaluate past assumptions about when and how species migrated.

Paleontologists in hard hats and safety vests walk along the banks of the canal, eyes down, scanning the ground for fossils from the Cascadas Formation. Photo by Juliana Olsson.

Present invasions

Understanding how ancient animals fared in new environments is relevant to our world today because so many plants and animals follow on the heels of humans. These species change ecosystems wherever they’re introduced. For example, elephant grass, or canal grass, grows everywhere along the canal. No one seems to know when it was introduced, though canal workers might have planted it to control erosion along the banks of the original canal cuts. Today it has become a pest: elephant grass is the first plant to appear in new clearings, driving out the native pioneer communities. One scientist is actually doing genetic research to determine if all the grass came from a single introduction or represents multiple arrivals. But that’s a story for another day!

Here on the banks of the Panama Canal the present tangles with the past. Elephant grass—a recent invasive—grows so quickly that it covers the fossil dig sites on the banks of the expanded canal. Paleontologists have only a narrow window of time to recover fossils before the plants take over again and cover the past for good.

The far bank of the canal is already overgrown with grasses and shrubs. Photo by Juliana Olsson.

By Juliana Olsson, Exhibits Writer/Editor, National Museum of Natural History

03/22/2014

Unintended Journeys is a photographic exhibit in collaboration with Magnum Photos on view until August 13, 2014 on the second floor of the National Museum of Natural History. This is the first post in a series exploring the relationship between humans and the environment, and the consequences of human migration and displacement.

This post, and others about the exhibit, are a collaboration between George Washington University students taking Dr. Joshua A. Bell’s seminar Resources, Consumption and the Environment, as well as interns working with Dr. Bell on the exhibit project.

The history of Homo sapiens isdefined by movement and interaction with the environment. For thousands of years humans have individually and collectively travelled around the world searching for better opportunities, searching for natural resources to exploit and as a result of being displaced by natural and human made disasters. These movements and the consumption of resources that they inevitably entail have only increased since European industrialization in the 19th century. With the enormous momentum of current human expansion, researchers are increasingly arguing that we have entered a new geologic time period known as the anthropocene. This new time period is understood as being distinct from the last 12,000 years because of the global environmental changes affected by humans. It is increasingly being argued that human related changes to the Earth’s environment could activate a new type of migration, an exodus from formerly fertile and habitable land found in areas all over the globe.

This image taken by Jonas Bendiksen in the Ganges Delta in Bangladesh in 2009 is a case in point. Wading through knee high floodwaters caused by Cyclone Aila’s destruction of the region’s protective dikes, displaced villages have had to abandon their homes, and at the time of the floods had to carry drinking water to their new homes. At the time this photograph was taken displaced villagers from Dakkhin Jhapa settled in makeshift huts and tents on the regions dikes. While it may be easy for some to dismiss this image as an event that happens elsewhere to other people, the same climatic shifts that have intensified Bangladesh’s monsoon season and have lead to the raising sea levels affecting the area, helped contribute to Hurricane Katrina which devastated the New Orleans and the wider Gulf of Mexico coast.

Bringing these events into a visual dialogue with other natural and environmental disasters, Unintended Journeys explores the relationships humans have to their environments and how individuals, communities, Nation States and international aid organizations responded to these events. The show also asks visitors to think about the role of photography and media in shaping our perceptions of these tragedies.

Unintended Journeys focuses on five natural disasters within the last decade: the impact of Hurricane Katrina (2005), the earthquake in Haiti (2010), the earthquake and resulting tsunami in northern Japan (2011) and the ongoing issues of desertification in northern Kenya and impacts of climatic shifts on Bangladesh. Collectively these events and processes are part of a growing trend of disasters worsened by mounting population pressures, increasing poverty, and shifting climate patterns. The wide range of cultures and environments in the exhibit allow us to think about the global connections that may exist between events separated by space and time. The show utilizes images taken by thirteen photographers of the award-winning Magnum Photos agency, renowned for its 65-year engagement with humanitarian issues.

Collectively the images in this exhibit reveal humanity’s vulnerability to the unpredictable power of nature and the fragility of our relationships with the environment. They also demonstrate humanity’s resilience in the face of calamity. Each section of the exhibit depicts the impact of specific events and the resolutions communities utilized to address and cope with these impacts.

These topics will only become more relevant in the next twenty years and beyond. In 2008, the Norwegian Refugee Council and Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre reported, at least 36 million people were abruptly displaced due to natural disasters. Similarly, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees predicted in 2009 that by mid century there will be between 50 and 200 million people displaced by climate change. The issues posed by rapid and accelerated change are the greatest challenges faced today and for the foreseeable future. Knowledge of our relationship with and impact on the environment is central to resolving the problems arising from these changes.

According to the International Organization for Migration’s 2010 World Migration Report, migration increased from 150 million people in 2000 to 214 million in 2010, and could reach 405 million by 2050. While aggregate numbers of that kind are impactful, it is important to look beyond them into the lived outcomes of migrants’ lives.

Though the events emphasized happened in the last decade, we are aware that natural and environmental disasters continue to affect different parts of the world in recent times as well — such as the Sichuan earthquake in China (2008), Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey (2012), and Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines (2013). We invite you to learn more about environmental events no longer covered by the media but still affecting communities, and to reflect on our relationships with our environment and the impact of disasters on communities worldwide.

We also encourage you to share your stories and experiences of an environmental disaster. If your story is selected, all or a select portion of it will be featured in the exhibit and on the Unintended Journeys website among other publicly submitted stories and images. Please click here for more information and to share your journey with us.

Unintended Journeys Exhibit, second floor, National Museum of Natural History. Photo by Matthew Kennedy, 2014.

09/10/2013

In mid-July of 2013, the Deep Time exhibits team went to North Dakota to collect fossils. Our goal was to find 66-million-year-old fossils from the Late Cretaceous for our new exhibitions, and to learn more about paleontology. This is the first post in a series about our experiences in the field.

The Hell Creek Formation is a microfossil treasure trove— if
you know what to look for. Photo of Abby Telfer
collecting microfossils. Photo by Kay Behrensmeyer, Smithsonian Institution

Before our trip, many exhibits team members had no field
experience. Luckily, we could turn to our curators for advice and
encouragement. They helped us learn what
to look for and where, and how to identify fossils.

How do professional paleontologists know something is a
fossil? Years of practice! But even with a little experience around fossils,
you’ll have an easier time picking one out from a pile of rock by looking for
three traits:

1. Color

The black and grey fossil bone fragment on the left
is a different color than the surrounding reddish rocks. It is also denser than
the weathered modern bone on the right. Photo
by Juliana Olsson, Smithsonian Institution

Fossils tend to have a different color from the surrounding
rock. They may be lighter than the rocky substrate, or they might be darker –
it all comes down to the weathering process, and the fossil materials. Plant
fossils are almost always darker than the rock in which they’re found. If
you’re searching for microfossils on the ground, they’ll probably be a lighter,
almost creamy color since they have been exposed to the elements—though teeth,
claws, and scales are dark and glossy.

2. Texture

This piece of turtle shell embedded in the rock has
a distinct, dimpled texture, which makes it noticeable even though it’s only
about 4 cm wide. Photo by Kay
Behrensmeyer, Smithsonian Institution

Bones are more porous than rock, and this texture difference
makes them easier to spot. Because of its “spongy” texture, if you touch a
fossil to your tongue it will typically stick, whereas rock and soil won’t. If
you’re not in the mood to do the tongue test, you can also look for pores through
a hand lens.

Some bone patterns can tell you who the original owner might
have been. Turtle shells have little pits and grooves on one side. Crocodile scutes
have even more pronounced pits, and sometimes a little ridge in the middle.
Young and old members of the same species differ in the growth patterns on
their bones, a fact which can help scientists determine the biological age of a
fossil. Sometimes bones even have little marks on them where muscles used to be
attached.

3. Shape

If you’re lucky, the item’s shape will be an even bigger
clue. While many bone fragments are unidentifiable, there are many bones that
are highly diagnostic for an entire group of animals, if not for a species.
These diagnostic bones tend to be things with complex shapes, like vertebrae,
skull bones, and even teeth and claws. For plants, the diagnostic features tend
to be the leaf edges and bases, as well as the pattern of veins.

The fossils we found came in a wide variety of
shapes, from blade-like gar scales (box at bottom right), to oval fish
vertebrae (above the gar scales), to pointy conical teeth! Photo by Kay
Behrensmeyer, Smithsonian Institution

Distinctive bones aren’t the only fossils with easily
identifiable shapes. Coprolites (fossil poop) look the way you’d expect them
to, and tend to be a little bit lighter than the rocks around them. Casts,
molds, and steinkerns (internal molds) look like the original organism;
mollusks and other animals with shells are often preserved this way.

If you spend even a short time looking for fossils, you’ll
learn how to tell that the thing in your hand is a vertebra or a root. But to
know what genus it belongs to, you’ll have to spend some time handling fossils
and doing research. Generations of scientists have taken the time to describe
in detail the anatomy of animals past and present, and you can compare your
fossils to these descriptions. You can visit university websites like UCMP for more information on
identifying fossils, volunteer at your local prep lab, or come see our fossil
exhibits in person. You can also follow Deep Time at the
Smithsonian (or the NMNH Facebook
and Twitter feeds) for more on fossils
and updates about the exhibit.

by Juliana Olsson, NMNH Office of Exhibits Writer with the support of Angela Roberts and Siobhan Starrs

02/25/2013

This post originally appeared on the Department of Invertebrate Zoology’s blog – No Bones - on February 20, 2013. Thank you to the Department of Invertebrate Zoology for allowing us to repost this piece!

The Deep Reef Observation Project (DROP) is a Smithsonian initiative in the island of Curaçao which began in 2011 with support from the Consortium for Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet. I have been studying hermit crabs and other crabs that have been filmed or photographed using a manned submersible named Curasub, which can dive down to 300 m in depth. A rich and spectacularly colored fauna of hermit crabs, never seen before alive in their original habitats, has been discovered.

These three hermit crabs, affectionately called “The Three Amigos” (in reference to the movie starring Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short), use tusk shells for housing. The operculate-shaped chelae allows for a tight closure of the shell when the hermit is fully retracted. The scientific name of this species is Pylopagurus discoidalis (A. Milne-Edwards, 1880), a species of the family Paguridae, never before photographed alive [Photo courtesy of Barry Brown]

The DROP program is providing an extraordinary and unique opportunity for taxonomists like me to make direct, live observations of many species that have previously been known exclusively from preserved and colorless specimens in museum collections. The study of these samples, such as those of Pylopagurus discoidalis shown here, is serving to expand and complement collaborative studies on hermit crabs systematic from the Caribbean at large. The specimens are being used to obtain molecular data such as barcodes and DNA sequences, which will be useful for biodiversity assessments, long-term faunal monitoring, and evolutionary studies.

04/24/2012

The 2011 Nature's Best Photography Windland Smith Rice International Awards Exhibit opened at the Natural History Museum on March 30, 2012. We all know that photography is a strikingly compelling means of experiencing nature's majesty. This concept is the driving force behind the Nature's Best Photography competition, which operates under the mission to "celebrate the beauty and diversity of nature through the art of photography." The Museums's exhibit features the winners in each award category, as well as a collection of some of the highly honored photographs submitted to the competition this year.

Last month, we featured a post highlighting the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), a consortium digital library project (of which the Smithsonian is a founding member) providing free access to millions of pages of biodiversity literature. The online library features not only texts but also stunning illustrations of natural history from the past 500 years. Not surprisingly, the species featured in the award-winning photographs from the Nature's Best Exhibit can also be found in the historic books held in the BHL collection. To celebrate the exhibit, we're highlighting some of the featured photographs and sharing more about the species captured in each snapshot through illustrations and scientific descriptions found in the Biodiversity Heritage Library. You can also learn more about the species starring in the exhibit by visiting the Encyclopedia of Life.

Constantine John Phipps, 2nd Baron Mulgrave, was the first to describe the polar bear, which he encountered during his 1773 expedition to the North Pole. He published the account in the 1774 publication A Voyage Towards the North Pole. Just four years later, the first published illustration of the bear was released in Die Säugthiere in Abbildungen nach der Natur (below).

The lion was first described by Carl Linnaeus, a famous Swedish botanist and zoologist who developed the schema of identifying organisms by genus and species names ñ a system known as binomial nomenclature. He is therefore referred to as the Father of Modern Taxonomy. The tenth edition of his revolutionary work, Systema Naturae, represents the birth of zoological nomenclature (using binomial nomenclature for animals). The Lion was scientifically described for the first time in this work.

In 1909, Frank Finn's work Wild Beasts of the World was published, containing 100 reproduced illustrations of nature drawings by Louis Sargent, Cuthbert E. Swan, and Winifred Austin. One of the drawings contained within the first volume was "Lion and Lioness," by Louis Sargent (above).

The Stag Beetle was also first described by Carl Linnaeus in his tenth edition of Systema Naturae. The beetle's common name comes from the resemblance of the speciesí large mandibles to a deer's antlers. Furthermore, male deer use their antlers when battling over territory and mates. The Stag Beetle uses its mandibles for the same purposes.

In 1792, Edward Donovan, an Anglo-Irish writer, illustrator and amateur zoologist, published the first volume of his sixteen volume work entitled The Natural History of British Insects. The series, published over a period of twenty-one years, contained 576 plates, 568 of which were colored. His depiction of the Stag Beetle, wings extended in flight, is particularly memorable (above).

02/28/2012

In addition to contributing to a project, winter break program participants have the opportunity to join special tours of NMNH's research facilities and collections areas. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.

As a child, I was fascinated by places like the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) but found it difficult to imagine as a real place where people could participate in and contribute to its activities and operations. And then there are those doors - the ones that lead beyond the public exhibitions. What’s behind them?

I got the chance to find out when I became a summer intern, which was also when I discovered my passion for facilitating this kind of experience for others. As the Head of the Office of Academic Services and a former NMNH intern, I can assure you the place is real, the staff are amazing, and through our academic opportunities, people like you can contributing their time and talents toward our endeavors.

Still a bit curious about what internships and fellowships are like at NMNH and wondering how you can apply? Through our series "Behind Those Doors," you'll take peeks behind-the-scenes with stories about our academic opportunities, the people participating in them, and links to more information about how to apply.

Winter and Spring Break Internships

So what did you do over winter break? Hang out with family? Eat too many holiday cookies? Did you know we have a special internship program specially designed to place interested and motivated undergraduate and graduate students, in short-term internships during their winter and spring breaks? During these short internships, you can gain practical experience by working in a museum setting, develop new skills learned from our staff, provide a service to the organization by contributing your time and talents, create professional partnerships, and pursue your fields of interest.

This year we had 36 students participate in our 2012 Winter Break Internship Program. They came from 16 different states, joined 18 different projects, and engaged with us for a combined total of nearly 5,000 hours.

Why offer such short internships? In the words of intern Jeremy Azurin, from Virginia Tech, “It's a fantastic time to explore different areas of science and possible career options, meet other interns and professional staff, and most importantly, gain valuable experience within the Museum.”

About her Winter Break Internship ShuMing Huang, a freshman from Smith College, commented “As the introduction says, '…because at Smithsonian, the possibility is endless!' My experience at Smithsonian really proved this statement. I have not only explored the endless possibilities, but also inspired by the people I met, the exhibitions I visited, and the projects I worked on. Every day is a new adventure.”

Arthi Aravind with the study skin of a Yellow-Headed blackbird that she prepared during her winter break internship. Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.

Can you really make a contribution during such a short internships? You bet! Arthi Aravind, from the College of William and Mary, working in our Division of Birds, puts it in perspective for us all. “Someday, a hundred years in the future, a researcher might pick up one of the birds I worked on and count it as a data point, and it will have done its part to help further the mission of the Smithsonian Institution, which is to 'increase and diffuse knowledge.' In its lifetime, it’s difficult to predict just how many projects this one specimen will be involved in, but when you consider how many specimens the Smithsonian Institution has as a whole—that’s 137 million—it’s mind-boggling to imagine the importance of the collections to the cause of advancing human scientific knowledge. What’s important is that museum visitors are aware of this, so they can truly understand the mission of museums and all that they do."

10/20/2011

(Note: This post originally appeared on the Smithsonian's Human Origins Program website as an introduction to their 2011 field season. Thank you to Dr. Rick Potts for allowing it to be reposted here!)

The study of human evolution is full of exploration, digging, and discovery. This blog tells of our Smithsonian team’s field experiences over the next several weeks as we explore, dig, and discover ancient tools and fossil bones.

This summer we’ll pick up from previous years to tell you about our research and discoveries at the field site in southern Kenya where we’ve worked for many years. Olorgesailie is the name of the site. Pronounced ‘Oh-LORG-eh-SIGH-lee, it’s a Maasai name for an ancient and inactive volcanic mountain on the floor of the East African Rift Valley in southern Kenya. It’s also the name of the surrounding countryside, much of which is a beautiful land of sharp cliffs, eroded hills, and dusty gullies.

Over many, many thousands of years, erosion by wind and rain has cut the ancient layers of sediment that piled up over hundreds of thousands of years. Those layers of dirt preserve lots of stone tools and fossilized remains, which were buried and became embedded in those layers, or strata (as geologists refer to them). From these hardened clues of stones and fossils buried in dirt, our team seeks to piece together an understanding of the lives of early human species and how their lives changed over time. You can think of the clues as an echo of an ancient time. They’re the only things left in the present about who these earlier precursors of our species were, how they lived, and what their surroundings were like.

During the course of this blog, I hope you’ll listen in about how we do this work, and why we think the stone tools and fossils we find are part of a growing understanding of the origin of our species. In fact, I’ll try my best to introduce you to a wide range of topics about our team’s study of human evolution.

As I write this diary from the field, you’ll get a picture of our digs and the people who are part of our research. For now, let me mentionDr. Briana Pobiner, who works with me in the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian. While Briana has her own research in Kenya, she also works with our team back home as our expert in public outreach and education. Briana kindly came over a few weeks ago, before I was able to leave the U.S., to help prepare for the Olorgesailie field season. That involved organizing the Kenya crew and making sure our field vehicles were getting serviced and repaired.

Life outdoors in the dust and sun of the Rift Valley is fun – and also very challenging. It takes us away from our lives back home in the office and classroom, into a world of early ancestors and relatives of our species. It’s no exaggeration to say, I can’t think of anything more rewarding or exciting to do. I hope you enjoy this adventure.

05/18/2011

The Museum’s fossil preparation facility, FossiLab, recently received a shipment of dinosaur fossils from northern Zimbabwe. They were collected last year by an international team of scientists, including NMNH Dinosaur Curator Matt Carrano.

The fossils, still largely encased in rock, are of two types of dinosaur. One, a small, primitive meat eater closely related to Coelophysis, was a member of the dinosaur group that eventually gave rise to huge predators like T. rex. These fossils were found in a “bone bed,” a place where the fossil remains of many individuals are mixed together. Coelophysis fossils have been found in other bone beds, most famously at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, and the new discovery may help scientists answer questions such as whether Coelophysis and related species lived in groups, and what events led to the death and burial of so many animals at once. The other Zimbabwean dinosaur is a prosauropod, a medium-sized plant eater that had a large claw on its thumb, a long neck, and leaf-shaped teeth for chopping plant matter. They seem to have been quite common at a time when the local environment was desert, and researchers wonder why.

The scientists discovered the fossils in a river canyon. During the rainy season, water courses through the canyon eroding its rock walls and uncovering fossils. Then, when the rains stop, the riverbed dries up and becomes a convenient path for scientists prospecting for newly exposed fossils – and for lions and elephants traveling through the bush.

Paleontologists are friendly, as a rule, but prospecting can be solitary work. Team members often spread out to cover as much territory as possible, and as they walk slowly along searching for fossils, they sometimes become oblivious to everything around them. Obviously, this is not the smartest behavior when large, possibly dangerous animals are nearby, so the team hired a local wildlife guide to keep them out of trouble. He coached them on what not to do when charged by lions (run), or elephants (stand still) and kept them bunched together in the relative safety of a “herd” as they prospected in the canyon.

The scientists found the tracks of several big cats as they worked in the riverbed, but, to their relief, they came face to face with only one group of predators -- dinosaurs, all safely fossilized.

Abby Telfer, FossiLab Manager, Paleobiology Department

Image captions and credits (top to bottom): At the Museum, a plaster and burlap field jacket holds a jumble of dinosaur fossils from the bone bed, including a jaw fragment with teeth (center). Photo by A. Telfer; Removing fossils from the canyon wall in Zimbabwe. Photo by M. Carrano; Leopard tracks in the dry riverbed. Photo by M. Carrano.